The present invention relates generally to building automation systems. More particularly, the invention relates to an object-oriented software system for constructing building automation applications with minimal hardware dependency.
Traditional building automation systems are designed, from the ground up, according to the type and physical requirements of the devices and controllers used in the system. This conventional approach makes today's building automation systems highly device-dependent and controller-dependent. Being device-dependent, conventional systems are difficult to enhance and often stubbornly resist integration with new technologies.
The present invention avoids such hardware dependency by providing a collection of specially designed software components that may be assembled to construct complex and sophisticated building automation applications. The software components are self-contained and portable, each encapsulating different fundamental aspects of larger building automation systems. The software components are designed to work together, communicating with one another through common communication methods. Specifically, the software components encapsulate many of the common physical properties and physically constrained functionality, leaving the system designer or system integrator free to define the application-specific details. The collection of software components provided by the invention allows the system integrator to assemble applications without worrying about the details of the underlying physical system constraints. The system integrator is thus able to build application-centric building automation systems largely without any hardware dependencies.